Content Analysis and Target Audience!

During class, we analysed the content of two very different magazines. These being NME and Top Of The Pops  This analysis consisted of finding out how many adverts were in the publication, what type of adverts were in the publication and also the amount of pages taken up by adverts, editorials, letter pages and full page articles. This was all conducted, to try and find out who the Target Audience was and how the magazines showed this through Demographics and Psychographics.

The first magazine I analysed was NME. This magazine, in context with the other magazine I analysed, Top Of The Pops, had a lot more substance and more reading involved. In terms of advertisements there was plenty to take from the publication. A full 47 advertisements were found from the front page to the back and these covered a range of topics such as gaming, music concerts, soundtracks and technology such as the iPad. These adverts covered, in total, around 7 pages of the magazine, about 3 full pages for music concerts and a 4 page spread for Halo Reach for Xbox.  Suprisingly however, there was no T.v listings and only gig guides. 

In terms of the actual topics of adverts itself, there was only 1 game advert, 6 music related adverts and 1 for the iPad. On the other hand, the more concrete features you find in almost every magazine was present in NME, however they were not in abundance. The editorial covered 2 pages, whereas the letter pages only covered half a page. The articles always covered a full page in which there were many.  The special features that were issued on the specific copy we analysed were the festival polls of Glastonbury and Reading and the free token for a free copy of the next issue, although these were limited, it shows a signal of intent of trying to bring in a certain type of audience. On my review of NME, I came to the conclusion that the Target Audience was of a more mature nature and anything between 15-40 as the nature of the articles and gimmicks are more than likely to be more appealing to this age group than to younger consumers.

The second publication I analysed was Top Of The Pops magazine and this was almost bare compared to NME. There were only 7 advertisements in total on the magazine and they had topics such as general healthcare, movies and music soundtracks. The special features in the magazine, in which there were more so than NME, such as stickers special interviews with JLS and Justin Bieber, also special prizes to win exclusive movie tickets. There was also no T.v listings and no small advertisements, hinting at maybe the audience this magazine is directed at. It was, statistically lacking in comparison to NME with no editorial column, 1 letter page and 6 full article pages.

Top Of The Pops magazine is very much fixated on the young female culture of today from ages between 8-13 which is a very powerful part of society. As the special features and gimmicks indicate that they are definitely looking to grab girls of this age to read their magazine, along with not much hard core articles unlike NME which would not interest girls of this age. In stark contrast, NME may be pushing towards a more male audience however many mature young women or women may read this as the genre of music it generally covers is listened to by the female public. The demographic scale of both these magazines are spread across the UK, with no specific area that the two magazines target, however there is areas of the country which uphold bigger influences of, for example, a rock or teenage girl culture.